Technical standards refer to documents that are approved by a recognized body and are non-enforceable rules, guidelines or characteristics of products or related processes and production methods for general or repeated use. Relevant technical terms, symbols, packaging, marking or labeling requirements are also part of the standard. They refer to one or a series of documents with certain mandatory requirements or guiding functions, containing detailed technical requirements and relevant technical solutions. Their purpose It is to make relevant products or services meet certain safety requirements or market entry requirements. The essence of technical standards is the conditions that must be met for one or several production technologies and the implementation technology that can achieve this standard. It has two meanings:
1. It draws a line for the level that technology must reach. As long as it does not reach this line, it is unqualified production technology;
2. Technology The technology in the standard is complete, if it does not meet this type of standard that contains a certain amount of technical solutions. In reality, we have many misunderstandings about standard global technology licensing strategies - many people think that licensing itself is just a standard license, while others think that as long as standards are established, they can enjoy the fruits of technology licensing. As everyone knows, the global technology licensing strategy of modern technology standards is a systematic project of intellectual property strategy and a management issue. The management and planning of this intellectual property are involved before the establishment of standards. The global technology licensing strategy of modern technology standards follows the idea of ??"technology patenting - patent standardization - standard licensing".
This idea runs through the entire global technology licensing strategy. At the same time, this idea is implemented with a high-level intellectual property strategic management. This is because from the early stages of establishing standards, intellectual property strategic management must be involved. The first step is to apply for a patent, because patented technology is the basis for the implementation licensing strategy of technical standards, and the publication of technical standards often leads to the disclosure of information, making Some technologies no longer meet the relevant provisions of "novelty" in the patent law, thus losing the possibility of obtaining patents, which greatly reduces the standard's ability to license externally. The second step is to incorporate these patented technologies into the standards during the technology standardization stage. While establishing the standards, it is necessary to build a technology licensing framework for this standard system. The last step is to implement global technology licensing after the standard is established. At each stage, there will be different operations based on different standards, thus reflecting many types of intellectual property strategies.
Classification of technical standards:
Technical standards can be divided into legal standards and de facto standards.
Legal standards refer to standards set by government standardization organizations or government-authorized standardization organizations. De facto standards are standards set jointly by a single enterprise or a small number of enterprises with a monopoly position.
De facto standards can be divided into two categories: one is a unified or single product standard formed by a certain enterprise based on its market advantages. The most typical ones are the Windows operating system of Microsoft Corporation and Intel Corporation of the United States. The combination of microprocessors is called "WinTel de facto standard" by American scholars. Similar ones include the historical JVC VHS home video recorder and SONY's Betamax home video recorder standards.
The other type is standards jointly formulated by several enterprises, such as DVD player standards. As legal standards, the general emphasis is on openness, universality, consistency, and systematicness. Early standardization organizations tried their best to avoid introducing intellectual property rights into standards, and tried to use technologies that did not involve intellectual property rights, so that their standards could be easily promoted after they were released. For intellectual property rights that are unavoidably involved (such as patented technologies), the rights holders are required to publicly make a commitment to give up their rights or at least make a reasonable guarantee to allow others to implement them, otherwise they will not be considered for inclusion in relevant standards. But as a factual standard, it is different from the legal standard. De facto standards often contain or involve many intellectual property rights, especially the intellectual property rights owned by the de facto standard setters. It is difficult to avoid the restrictions of these intellectual property rights when implementing these standards.
Facing the practical problems caused by the combination of technical standards and intellectual property protection, the most fundamental solution is to increase investment in development and innovation, and strive to possess core technologies with independent intellectual property rights. On this basis Develop your own technical standards, make them bigger and stronger, and gradually form de facto industry standards, even national standards and international standards.
For example, Datang Telecom proposed the TD-SCDMA standard on behalf of my country. It was accepted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and became one of the three mainstream 3G standards in the world. The premise for standard setting is technical strength. Without strong development capabilities and technological innovation capabilities, it is difficult to participate in the formulation of standards. The complexity and risks of high-tech make it difficult for an enterprise or even a country to develop and possess all the core technologies involved in a standard. The fundamental purpose of formulating your own standards is not to monopolize a standard, but to strive for your own place in a standard.
This right to participate relies on the core technology intellectual property rights owned in the standard. Mainly reflected by patented technology. It is quite difficult to turn the standards set by an enterprise into de facto industry standards. Not to mention the formation of international standards. This is difficult to achieve for the vast majority of domestic enterprises. The purpose of raising this issue here is to encourage all sectors of society to establish an awareness of attaching importance to the combination of intellectual property rights and technical standards. When an enterprise formulates its own corporate standards, it should have this awareness, and when an industry formulates its own industry standards, it should also have this awareness. When a country formulates its own national standards. We should have this kind of awareness.